South African doctors were trying to save the legs of a top triathlete Wednesday after three men tried to chop his limbs off with a chainsaw.

Mhlengi Gwala, 27, was biking to a training session before dawn Tuesday when the attackers pulled him off his bike, dragged him into bushes and started sawing into his right calf, damaging muscle, nerves and bone.

“The chainsaw wasn’t that sharp and they couldn’t get it started. So they manually started cutting,” close personal friend Sandile Shange told News24. “Two of them held him down while the other started on his leg.”

When they got to the bone and couldn’t cut anymore, they started in on his left leg.

“They kept on cutting and when they got to the bone, because the saw was not that sharp, the saw got stuck,” police spokesperson Nqobile Gwala told the BBC.

The men reportedly were interrupted by a security guard and ran away — allowing the bloody athlete to crawl to a road and flag down a car to take him to the hospital.

Gwala, who was set to compete in the South African national championships this month, was undergoing a five-hour surgery for his injuries, said Dennis Jackson, director of the elite athlete program for the KwaZulu-Natal province.

Doctors are confident they can save the athlete’s legs, as the attackers missed a main artery.

There was no immediate explanation for the grisly attack.

The athlete said he offered the attackers his cellphone, wallet and bike — but they still went straight for his legs and spoke a language he couldn’t understand.

“I have never heard of any enemies that he may have,” Jackson told the Associated Press. “He is a wonderful ambassador for the sport.”

Gwala has represented South Africa at international competitions in Chicago in 2015 and in the Netherlands last year. He became an athlete after overcoming drug and alcohol addictions, Jackson said.

His family has suspected the attack was motivated by jealousy, said Sandile Shange.

“It seems very strange,” he told News24.

Gwala’s ordeal is eerily similar to the 1994 beating of Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, whose leg was almost broken by Tonya Harding’s husband — an attack that left other athletes reeling.

Triathlete Henry Schoemen, who won bronze for South Africa at the Rio Olympics in 2016, called the attack on Gwala “disgusting.”

“How safe are we on SA roads?,” he tweeted

Police confirmed they were investigating the case as attempted murder.